Viruses are responsible for many infectious diseases in animals, including mammals and humans in particular. Unlike infections with bacteria, relatively few agents are effective for the prevention and treatment of viral infections. The biology of viral diseases is now well understood, including viral genome transcription, translation, and replication. In RNA-containing viruses an important enzyme is RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, which is responsible for viral genome replication. RNA-dependent RNA polymerase is an essential protein encoded in the genomes of all RNA-containing viruses with no DNA stage that have negative-sense RNA. The enzyme catalyzes synthesis of the RNA strand complementary to a given RNA template. Because replication of the virus depends on RNA polymerase, this enzyme is a promising target in the development of new anti-viral compounds.